I know it sounds paradoxical to create a living zombie, but the origins of zombies, from the culture that developed Voodoo as we know it now - their method of zombie creation was literally the control of a living human, like putting them in a permanent hypnotized state, where they could only follow basic commands. Thus very slow to move/react.
It was not permanent they would use pufferfish toxins to paralyze the target and bury them in a shallow grave for a while or they used another drug called devils breath to make the target more susceptible to influences
@@ExeErdna Well, if you want to be historically traditional, it's more like there's a single magic caster that's a combo of artificer, cleric, wizard, and bard. Turns out magical beliefs are rarely modest or consistent. Almost all ancient magic was religious and historical in nature, and usually involved a variety of rituals and material components.
Just want to add that back in the early days, alongside level drain and other nasty effects: a) undead moved silently in dungeons b) darkvision was based off of heat signatures (infravision)
@asdrubale bisanzio i think you're thinking of demiliches as being more powerful liches; archliches are the good-aligned ones, for example certain elven communities would have one to guard their valuable areas
@@CorvusCorone68 You're thinking of the baelnorn, which is the elven version of a lich. Archliches CAN be good-aligned, but can also be just really, really powerful liches. Vecna, for instance, was an archlich, and he was about as evil as you can get.
Yeah archliches don't exist in 5E..but still, don't confuse them with demiliches. Demiliches are typical weaker then a standard lich in terms of raw stats( although they have a bunch of cool hacks that IMO can make them more dangerous in some situations) but archliches would be far stronger then either if you reworked them for 5E. But yeah, Mystra forbid we have good aligned undead, that might confuse the new players and make the game less "accessible" if we kept things that are actually cool and unique. Plus they went to so much effort to nerf the tarrasque, it would defeat the purpose if they added more monsters thay could provide an actual challenge at lv 20
Honestly, it's a little bit cringe. People need to get over their fantasy hurdles - none of it makes sense! If you're willing to accept a world filled with magic, you shouldn't apply a post-1700's understanding of science.
@@monsieurdorgat6864 I think both works. It just depends on someone's taste. What I don't like is when people are complaining or even hate on one of those options when they think their kind of fun is superior. We all just wanna have fun and chill in our way. It's sad to see so many people unconsciously trying to prevent that for others because they tend to like one more than the other.
@@Kino_Cartoon I'm not putting down anyone specific, that's just my take. I'm definitely not going to hate on anyone who's not already a raging lunatic. But it's an open forum, and I think if someone is willing to put their idea out there for a response, it's not going to hurt them to say I don't like it. But to your point, people all have their own level where they arbitrarily decide is an appropriate amount of realism. Being a scientist, mine is pretty low because you're breaking rules pretty early from a physics perspective, so I prefer applying a psychological, sociological, and historical lens to fantasy since it doesn't clash as badly. But if you don't know much about science, applying it to magic might make more sense to you.
@@monsieurdorgat6864 Oh I wasn't referring to you when I describe what I don't like. I just wanted to add that thought because when we talk about behavior than that's what I dislike. What someone prefers to use in their fantasy doesn't really matter to me as long as they have fun and it doesn't inflict harm. I might not be a scientist but I am a computer science student and we do learn about scientific analysis and research processes because our university is grounded on mainly theoretically approach towards computer science. But I'm not quite sure if your taste of fantasy is determined by your education. I think it's more of a personal preference. My friends and I love to play D&D and we are a mix of sci-fi and fantasy fans. You might not *need* an explanation for something fantastic when lot's of things already break realistic physics but thinking of it is still exiting. That's e.g. why I'm a big fan of the magic system of HunterXHunter. Nen makes zero sense but it has an interesting explanation and it's limitations are also great. In DnD I'm playing an artificer sourcerer and I've explained that I can get spells slots that I use for articier spells back because I power my inventions through the energy I create with her cursed arm. Her wild magic is practically a mobile power source. I didn't need to do that but it's lot's if fun duribz role play. The described mechanic is also something that can give me ideas new ideas e.g. for a surprise attack of zombies burtsing out of stone statues but they can be hold back by a wooden door afterwards.
I’ve always loved undead but the 5e necromacer wizard really needs an overhaul, or better yet we need a class specifically dealing with raising and buffing the dead. I’d also love to see a Paladin that harnesses negative energy. PS cannot wait for a hobgoblin video.
3.5 unearthed arcana has paladins if tyranny and slaughter. They use negative energy. There is also the bone knight in the eberron campaign setting. That is a literal necromantic knight. Hopefully you can find some 5e versions.
I normally compensate with bone,claw, or ivory equipment and armor. A pole arm with sharp bone tip, carved bone blade can channel some forms of nercomancy spells (depending on the weapons) My favorite combo is ro plague touch daggers/knives
One of the most memorable moments I have ever had in D&D was when our DM brought back one of the player's paladins who had died like 3 months ago real word time (he had talked to the player and got their okay first) as the death knight minion of the big bad. That was a real jaw drop moment.
I just remember our gnome ranger having his hit point maximum reduced by wraths like three adventures in a row. The first time he died and got resurrected - the other two times he simply had "that feeling again" Though your adventure sounds cooler, I can imagine both awe and horror one must have felt.
Good thing the DM asked for permission. My DM killed off my character in the 3rd or 4th session and forced me to play a genie warlock who possessed my fiend warlock's body.
One time I made the players go to a graveyard full of zombies that kept grappling them and dragging them out. Turns out the zombies were protecting the villagers from a wraith, and being level 1 anytime the players got downed the zombies would grab them and drag them to safety. Everyone loved it
Reasons why I really like Undead as foes in my games: 1) Low maintenance: The dead don't need food, water, air, light, or rest. They don't form unions, seldom complain about poor working conditions, and are scary as shit. 2) The dead make great inhabitants for abandoned castles, remote keeps, underground dungeons, and generally any place where you don't want to have to explain how the bad guys live. 3) LOTS of book and film lore to draw from! All you have to do to describe an undead horde is flash pics from Army of Darkness or just about any Ray Harryhausen film. 4) Availability. Need recruits? Find any cemetery or ancient battlefield. Some will come with their own gear!
The problem: if necromancers keep raiding abandoned battlefields and cemeteries in your world, why does the general population start wisening up and burn bodies in mass to prevent them rising as undead?
"What would you say if all those honorable soldiers, that lie here on this ancient battlefield, could hear you right know and be whitness of your necromantic cruelty?!" "Honestly just one word: RISE!"
I always allowed characters to eventually regain lost levels from energy drain at an exponent rate per week. For example if you lost 2 levels it took 4 weeks of rest to get the levels back. Three levels was 9 weeks etc. This allowed the undead to be a menace and allowed them to create new undead, but gave players a chance to recover what they had rightfully earned. This allowed the effects of an undead attack to effect a module or even a campaign. But in the end players could recover what they had earned given enough time. That seemed fair to me.
@@daviddaugherty2816 That was the only use for the Restoration spell in 1e. Undo the level draining effects of undead and the ability score draining of spells like Feeblemind.
@@singledad1313 yep and it blew. Restoration was 5th or 6th level, so either very very rare or very expensive. Imagine working for weeks or months to gain a level only to have it yanked with one hit.
What most people never realize, undead are the most extreme of extreme sports enthusiasts. When the Wild Ride comes, all the undead arise with their skateboards to join, and only the bravest of mortals dare to impede them.
I really appreciate the older versions of Undead. Yeah they were a pain in the ass to fight but you knew you were in for a fight. It also meant my cleric characters would be totally Kick-Ass.
It's honestly really cool how undead used to be super dangerous in that they permanently weakened your character, it would make fights with skeletons and zombies a whole lot more terrifying if that was still the case.
1) undead generally yes, skeletons and zombies no 2) it probably works best in grittier game systems than 5e when the characters are more disposable, such as the case for dnd 1e, dnd 2e and basic, as well as Dungeon Crawl Classic (a modern spin on those early edition with more competent Fighting Men). It is only fun if the players expect their characters to die and expect their once prestine randomly generated abillity scores wittle down and they expect to just roll a new random character
@@IdiotinGlans It's not _just_ a matter of the tone of the campaign, in 5e you have a lot of agency and controll and customization available to you, becuase in 5e you are meant to be attached to your character and each character should be special and heroic. It's why rolling for stats is now an optional rule, you are meant to be empowered with it. Conversely back in those older editions rolling for stats was the norm and dictated what races/ classes you could choose from, with characters who have 18 or higher in a stat being absurdly powerful. If your character died, you just made a new one, and at level 1 their death was often inevetable. In that edition, it was less about making an interesting character with an compelling background from the start, and more about letting your character's personality grow "organically" and letting them be shaped by their past experiences, provided they even make it past 3rd level. The 2nd edition dungeon master's guide compares the early levels of an adventurer to their early childhood. Quote from that book: "Did Rath the Dwarf save by fool-hardily charging into battle when he was a mere 1st level? If he did, the odds are good that the player will try it again and begin to play Rath as a bold and reckless fellow On the other hand, if Rath was clobbered the first few times he rushed in, the player would begin to play Rath as a prudent and cautious fellow" Like you get what i mean? The enviorment in 2e and basic edition are way better enviorment for permanent energy drain, becuase character death was much less of a big deal and characters were sort of meant to develop their character's personalities based on what happens to them. If a 2nd level fighter gets their strength halved, that's no big deal in 2e, but a massive annoyance in 5e
Ah, undead. One of my favorite things. Hell, one of my first questions about any fantasy rpg is; "can I be a necromancer?" Not too keen about necromancy in DnD 5e though, at least when it comes to undead minions. Luckily, I love the necromancer that doesn't use undead minions too, and reflavoring is a thing.
@@defensivekobra3873 I don't like how you have to reassert control over them every day, and would have much rather preffered if they were under your control indefinitely, but there was a limit to how many undead you could control at a time. It is also a bit problematic in discussions about playing a good-aligned necromancer, since it leads to arguments about the potential danger of you losing control over your minions. You are limited to low CR creatues, but can make a lot of them, which leads to huge hordes that slows the game down, and is also a hassle to manage. I would have preffed to have a small squad of stronger undead, which would not only solve those issues, but it just seems to me that a necromancer who travels a lot, and wants to avoid any troubles with the general public that most likely don't approve of their practise, would find it a lot easier to travel around with a small squad of undead rather than an army. All in all, they made being a necromancer who uses undead minions such a chore, and if you do go about it you need an army for them to stay relevant through the game. You are also limited to only using humanoid corpses, which is a bit boring, but can also be a problem if those aren't available. The Summon Undead spell from Tasha's is great though, and I wouldn't mind playing a necromancy wizard and just use that spell to get an undead minion. Or I could just pick it up as a warlock, that works too.
@@TheHornedKing I totally agree, though your DM might rule different: The wording isn't unmistakable there. "Reassert control" for 24 h more could mean that you were to control the skeleton for three days that you casted the spell three timrs on. The "current" 24h-period could be the "latest" 24h-period. This way you could cast Animate Dead (being a 6th lvl Wizard) at least two to three times a day. Doing so each day for a week gives you three weeks worth of time for your adventures, so that you don't need to cast this spell in the meantime. And you'd have four skeletons at hand, all of which could wield a wand of catapult or an amulet of counterspell. Do the same thing later on with wights and you might happen to put a flame tongue or an oathbow to a good use! And besides...: Your undead don't care if you store them in a Demiplane, or a bag of holding, or if you invent an undead storing spell - they'd be fine and prove to be great backup!
Oh - and making your skeletons speak comes also to great use: this way, after attuning to a ring of spell storing, they ALL could cast Summon Undead. If you got a divine sorcerer friend, they may be also casting it as a twinned spell
Oh boy- So you're telling me that if I were to play a gnome cleric who runs around throwing salt at people, he would *eventually* be super useful? Sweet!
14:10 Just imagine some old man/lady sweeping their doorway when they throw salt over their shoulder and hitting a Lich that was walking down the street disguised and having the area the salt landed on burst into blue flames and partiality revealing his undead form beneath... What would you say to try and get out of this situation Alive?
Now I see everyone's fascination with the undead, I could see most things mentioned in this video being incredibly fun in a campaign! Isn't there some kind of earth telekinesis or something in D&D? You could use that to mix salt with the vampire's grave dirt, right?
@@Erick7Greenday the ONLY edition where that happened was 3.5e, and also it's really stupid. Nobody is gonna be stupid enough to try to cast Cure Wounds on a skeleton for a meager 1d8+wis dmg when sacred flame or a fucking mace deals just as much damage, healing spells are weaker than damage spells in terms of raw numbers, so why not just use a fucking damage spell from the start? Guiding Bolt is right there, ready to use
The necromancy school should just be flat out more powerful than comperable spells from other schools but always at a risk/cost. It's supposed to be a school of dangerous and forbidden magics. Make it feel like the magic itself is barely under control and trying to kill you or your friends! Deciding to use a necromancy spell should involve considering more than just action economy and spell slot.
Strahd: PREPARE TO MEET YO- Wait... where's your rogue and cleric? *Cleric and the rogue proceeds to mix the salt into the dirt of strahd's bed* Rogue: You sure this'll work? *unholy strahd screams* Cleric with a sh!t eating grin: oh. I'm pretty sure it worked.
Strahd may be the only vampire to avoid beeing beaten in that way considering his....special prison. Or they might think its hilarious and let it happen anyway. xD
Okay, but I also wanna know about the other guys' stuff and the alternative lores. To focus on one setting is to leave out so many cool ideas from other minds. Make another video, please. "What else they don't tell you about the undead"
I one shot the divination wizard in my campaign with finger of death. The party killed the big bad the next round. Now he was playing an amnesiac who purposely, magically, erased his mind of stuff he did in his past but his divination magic was constantly bringing back his memories. Therefore since the master who controlled his undead form died I had him roll 2 d20. If they were the same number, he’d regain his memories from before he died. He did. Now he’s on a mission to restore his humanity and the party has no idea how to handle an undead teammate
XD hahahaha now thats a "shit went to hell party still won, now what the fuck is rattling? OH FUCK THE WIZARDS BACK! but now a undead and got more memories than he started what to do now"
I am glad you uploaded this as I will be playing Curse of Strahd campaign run by a DM friend of mine. They are allowing me to play a resurrected Tiefling Skeleton by the name of Itward so having this new knowledge of undead in mind is extremely helpful. :D
I've been obsessed with undead nearly all my life, and I've always wanted some source of lore detailing both the lore "mechanics" involved in it, but also the differences between many of the similar types (ghoul ghast ghost etc) Thank you very, very much.
Ghouls are ever hungry...they literally eat whatever they kill and heal that way. If they haven't eaten in quite awhile they will stop and eat even while being attacked, that is how bad the hunger has them. Naturally formed ghouls died from hunger and feel a never ending hunger in their undeath due to this reason. I'll add one you did not ask about due to the ghoul's background...and this is a Wendingo. A wendingo is created from a man that actively killed and ate other humans. ALL wendingo were once human that fed on other humans. In death they become huge lumbering monstrocities that continue to crave human flesh. They are hulking beasts of rage and hunger that cannot be fully controlled beyond 'x is the enemy y is the friend'. They will kill and eat x and leave y alone, but must be put away or restrained after the battle as it's rage and hate can only be focused as long as an enemy is present. This is why they are solitary undead and rarely found in an undead horde or city. These things can stand 10-15 feet tall with hands the size of a large adult's torso to give you an idea of how monstrous they are. A ghast is like a ghoul but the hunger is not constant and is more intelligent. They can talk and handle mildly complex ideas. If a ghoul survives long enough, there is always a small chance they will manage to become a ghast. Ghasts are capable of utilizing their former hunger to go into a berserk like state. A ghost is an immaterial being lacking a physical body. Can be good or evil. They can speak and interact with the world around them through limited telekinesis. Some can possess the living in order to better interact with it. They can drain the life away from the living through direct contact but can choose not to do so, death in this way creates a ghost of the killed. This ghost is NOT controlled by the one that created it. Ghosts created naturally are bound to something that was important to them in life and cannot get too far from it. If killed a ghost will reform again until the item it is bound to is destroyed or it's reason for lingering on is accomplished. Those created through unnatural means do not have this limitation but similarly will not reform if destroyed. These are all the mythology around the undead. D&D usually changes things to make them more fitting or suited to a game setting.
My favorite kind of undead is created through Contractmancy. It can be a long drawn out process where a necromancer has to write a magical contract (and many times it is written in the users own blood to solidify the bond) by which their minion will be beholden to. The magic user then reaches into the Void Between Worlds (or Limbo for your reginal equivalent) and plucks a lost soul (even this process in of itself could drain or kill the user, becoming lost in the Void themselves). This is where the process becomes tricky, but also highly rewarding. A good Contractmancer can actually find souls who specifically will fit the job required of the undead creature. Need a really good body guard? Find the soul of a lost warrior. Need a really good scout? Find the soul of a woodland ranger or rouge. The caster then issues the contract to the soul, and the soul agrees or disagrees to the terms and conditions. This is of course, what makes many Necromancers not bother with contractmancy, as ripping souls out of the ether and throwing them into a corpse (or reigniting the animus) is much simpler and does not require a second parties consent. However, when you DO get the souls consent, the resulting Undead entity will be much more intelligent, wiser and strategically minded than any other form of Undead one can typically raise from a fresh grave. Many contractmancers use skeletons, ghouls or ghosts as "physical forms" as they can provide the lost soul with a stronger sense of autonomy. It can be a very long winded process. But the skeleton soldiers you get from it are some of the best of the best. Especially because the actual soul inhabiting the body WANTS and ENJOYS being "alive" in the material world again, able to enact their profession and skills like they did long ago. This is also a way for magic users to bypass a faded animus, as the lost souls could truly be from any era. And once more, this is also what can make contractmancy extremely dangerous. A powerful double edged sword that can result in one of the most powerful undead armies ever created.
I still contend that 2nd edition was the best edition, even with THAC0, which is actually pretty comprehensive if you use the optional additional rules. Certain kinds of armor defended particularly well against one weapon and exceptionally poorly against another was modeled. Rules like this made blunt weapons additionally good against plate armor, because that's historically the best kind of weapon to actually use against that armor. Big nasty dents on the outside of the armor tend to leave really nasty effects on the inside. Maybe it's just because of my age, but 2nd ED just seemed to have the most (I hate to use this term) soul and charm.
THAC0 wasn't really that complicated. People just like to *pretend* it was when they do the "back in my day" speeches. Really, it was just a number you had to beat to hit.
@@daviddaugherty2816 I don't get the THAC0 hate at all. It made it incredibly easy to figure out what you needed to hit your target and allowed combat to move along so much faster. All the variables for your "to hit" roll were already worked out and factored into your THAC0. All you had to do was subtract the target's AC and you had your target number. For some reason most younger player's equate THAC0 with 2e, but it actually evolved during 1e. It did become official in 2e though. Out of curiosity, I just dug out some of the old character sheets from my group's campaign in the mid 80's. We had THAC0's on the sheets way back then, years before 2e.
@@singledad1313 Mostly it is due to laziness. Why deal with the pre calculations required for THAC0 when you can just have an AC and I have my TH number added to my roll. I don't need any math. Long as my number is higher than yours...done. THAC0 had, while minor, math and calculation that you had to look up in order to find and place. Everything after THAC0 was simplified in order to make things smoother. The armor class you are hitting against has a number, your bonuses and such is on your end and already written down. It speeds things up for the DM.
@@Nempo13 That's the beauty of THAC0. Everything, other than temporary buffs, is already factored into your THAC0 before you even sit down to play. All race , ability score, and magic bonuses, skills, feats, all that stuff is already calculated in the THAC0. Once combat begin, all you do is roll a die. For the DM THAC0 is even easier. Player subtracts his die roll from his THAC0 and he has the AC he hit. Blurd's THAC0 is 14, he rolls a 17, that means he hits AC -3. He tells the DM "I hit AC -3". In stead of rolling a d20 and then adding this, this, oh yea this, but not this this round, and can't forgot this, and that. And then the next round, the player goes through the exact same process, with the exact some bonuses, but has to add them all back in. And then "Oh crap! I forgot I had this bonus last round! Can I change my result from last round?" Seriously, every single game session I've played from 3.5e onward has been like this. A combat round that would take 2 minutes tops in the "bad old days" takes 30 minutes or more now.
What do you mean by that exactly? HD control limit but otherwise your undead stay loyal forever? You apply skeleton/ zombie template to specific monster? What do you mean with "necromancer like older editions"???
@@defensivekobra3873 he's letting me control a certain cr type of undead and letting make certain undead per spell slot but also requiring the body of certain ones but he doesn't let me make certain creatures like vampires or something like that,and my undead don't have the crazy debuffs he was talking about
Hearing about the "living undead thrall" is giving me an idea for a player character that is one such victim and starts their quest seeking out their master with only the words "Find me." being the last directive. What would they do in order to find their master? What lengths do they go to with the effect of the magic controlling their mind? What happens when/if they mind their master or if their master is killed? You could even be a zealot barbarian and/or an orc to add more of that "endless march" feel to the character, showing that they really CANNOT give up until their mission is done.
One problem, living zombies barely have their own mind at all. So no class skill usage, you also go last in every round of combat to show your thinking is severely hindered. So no rage, no feats, certainly NOTHING resembling spells or prayers. You wouldn't be competent in any skills either due to how slow and confused your own thoughts would be. Now if you are simply a Thrall. Your mind has been taken over but you are still useful in that you are able to think. There is a reason mindflayer minions are rather scary. They have their mind and all their faculties in tact.
I love the idea of undead being any alignment... so... in theory... you could have a town of friendly zombies or skeletons just hanging out and doing stuff like farming... heck you could even have these zombies hire heroes to accomplish tasks for them
Paladin: Stumbles upon an old Town appears to not be on the map... ...scratches his head... "Where the Fuck am I" ... ...Hello... .whisper.. Oh Hi didn't see you there Looks down next to him and see a Gnome standing there near the entrance to the Town "Where am I Gnome" Gnome say "Dead" Paladin looks at the Gnome... Hmmm...Dead huh Start uttering a chant and lifting up is right arm in a Fist "BEGONE FROM MY SIGHT I SMITE THE" ...Gnome "WHooo there fellow... Slow down"... "This is DeadTown...thats the name you asked where you are the" Gnome replied The Paladin let's out a sigh of relief "Oh so where is everyone" the Paladin asks the Gnome replies "Dead" The Paladin now confused by the replie Ask the Gnome "who are you" Gnome answer "Bill" Paladin says "just Bill" Gnome answer again "Bill Door" Hehehe...slowly disappears Ps...the Paladin looks to his right and see a Zombie in a farm field towling the earth...the Paladin asks "what you farming" The Zombie replies Mmm...Cornnn...what did you think I was going to say...BRAINs classic Paladin doesn't understand the world, but goes around imposing their Might The Paladin then says "Fist bump"... The Farmer Zombie Fist bumps the Paladin... ...Poof...(Zombie turns to ash) I call that SMITE
@@Caio-ow5tm Probably just to munch on out of habit. Would probably give a few chuckles to see a family of skeletons share some bread just for it to fall on their chairs and get eaten by rats.
'Protection from negative energy' would protect oneself from undead effect under a certain lvl. Having a priest or paladin in an undead fighting group was important. A mage would do in a pinch dependent on his schools of magic. That or lots of scrolls.
I haven't played D&D 2e in almost a decade, ever since my gaming group wanted to try out 3.5e and quickly moved into Pathfinder. I've now become the semi-permanent DM of our group, and this hit me like a nostalgia train, at the same time reminding me of all the incredible stuff Undead used to have. Welp, excuse me, I have to make a few dozen adjustments to my special Undead BBEGs and Lieutenants now... :D
I created a few spells to solve most the problems, you guys might have with the 5e necromancer: (If anyone wants the full detailed versions - just ask! I just wasn't sure if anybody wanted me to; soooo... here is some inspiration for you guys :-) ) Grant Voice (2nd lvl transmutation) grants any creature a humanoid voice. Sounds silly? That is until you realise, that all your undead can now use the Ring of Spell Storing and the Wand of Magic Missile... (Have you ever thought of this one divine sorcerer that twin-casts Summon Undead on 4-5th level? Now you can have 36 of those) Unlife Flame (7th lvl necromancy) burns away the flesh of living humanoids, transforming them into skeletons that you control permanently - like Finger of Death - but with skeletons! Embrace thy Bones (4th level necromancy) allows you to raise a group of creatures of any type as skeletons or zombies using the Animate Dead spell, if they die within the next 24 hours. Skeleton Warhorses? Yes. Zombie Beholders? Also yes! Skeleton Giants? Yesssss! This, though, doesn't work with create undead. Soliders of the Dust (6th lvl Divination) grants ALL YOUR UNDEAD the pack taktics trait for concentration, up to 10 minutes - dodgeing plate-armored zombies frontline, pike-wielding skeletons second line, archers and mages backline... The enemy never stood a chance... Enslavement of a master (8t lvl necromancy) works the best when you are in an all-wizard-party: If the enchanted object is ever to be the phylactery of a lich in spe, his/her ritual to become one fails, transforms him/her into a boneclaw and makes you its master (if your heart bears enough hate, that is - and no other restrictions matter). What is better than having an undead CR 12 assassin-puppy? Having an immortal undead CR 12 killer-assassin-puppy that you can affect with True Polymorph :D And the most dire one: Bound By Bones (9th level necromancy) is to be cast on a willing, living creature. Should this creature ever become an undead or cause an undead to be summoned through it, you control that very undead. You can have a number of summoned undead (which inkludes skeletons and NIGHTWALKERS alike) equal to your proficiency bonus + 1 (just imagine controlling 7 nightwalkers!). There is, however, no limit to the number of undead you can control, if they are DIRECTLY made from the ex-living creature: this includes wights, mummies, vampires, death knights, and dracoliches (but not normal liches - they do swap bodies too often)
I didn't want to believe undead got hit with such a hard nerf. Pulled out my 3.0 rulebook and looked at the 5.0 as a comparison. (I just recently started playing 5E after about 10+ years of not playing. Wow, just wow. Thank you for the lore video. I imagine these take an incredible amount of time to produce and appreciate you for doing it.
Thanks for doing this! I have an undead warlock/life cleric character and I was trying to figure out how I wanted to create my character’s patron. Since my DM is making a world to accommodate the tragic love story between my life goddess and undead patron I wanted to be able to provide enough information on my end to give towards that. My character’s purpose is to discover the past of her patron who can’t remember anything before he became undead and his lover, the goddess, can’t tell him what he forgot. That’s the bare bones of the story at least. Forgive the pun. Anyway, the goddess bestows their blessings on the character because they need that character to help the patron discover the past and return her lover to her. That’s why she CAN be contracted to both the patron and the goddess despite the opposing natures.
My group plays Dragon's Den, an older Czech System. Life drain is still a thing there, and our party lost about 7 levels in total between ourselves. It was a long campaign of vengeance after that
interesting alternate methods of dealing with undead- what we used to do was reduce the character's level but they regained 1 level per day, with earned experience being banked this made the undead scary, but not game-changing if they killed you, you died and became undead but if you survived, eventually you would recover as all living creatures have a link to the Positive Material Plane the drained energy would return
They also don't tell you that the undead are incredibly talented dancers and musicians. CAUSE THIS IS THRILLER! THRILLER NIGHT, AND NO ONE'S GONNA SAVE YOU FROM THE BEAST ABOUT TO STRIKE! 80's reference, the kids will love that. like if this makes you feel old, makes you feel nostalgic, or makes you feel awesome because that song will never stop being cool.
I am getting my party to a portion of the campaign where they are starting to face undead. This video was amazing! Please do a series of videos like the dragon ones on each type! I love this!
With circle of spores druid I want to have it as like vines and fungus magically grow around it and it's actually the plants moving it like muscles. So the cleric can't get all hissy
Making always being evil reminds me of a sacred type I remember hearing of. Where holy people offer themselves up to be sacred undead guardians to guard a site.
Yeah, it always being evil seems to have been retconed by 2e, but this guy doesn't seem to get that retcones happened, or that 1e was literally just a prototype.
MrRhexx: Fighting the undead is one of the hardest, and frankly scariest jobs for any group of adventures to take. DM randomly rolling dice behind the screen and asking everyone to make a perception check: Am I a joke to you?
That clerics fight with maces is not only to shatter the bones of undead skeletons. But also because according to Christianity they are not allowed to shed blood, so breaking bones is a workaround. This is why Otto who was a clergyman and, brother to William the Conqueror, used a mace in the Hastings campaign. It is probably depicted on the Tapestry of Balieu.
Undeath are by far my favorite trope in fantasy, whether fighting them as a pally or commanding them as a shadowknight or necromancer, the spooky places where they "unlive" are just awesome. 🖤
This video has a lot of good information for an Undead centric campaign that I have been working on bit by bit for about two years. I'll need to remember to come back to this as a reference as I work on it more.
I remember reading an old school dnd magazine and having at least 3bpages of it dedicated to the writer shitting on dnd cause he lost 3 levels to undeads lol
Yay Lords of Darkness!!!! That book got a LOT of use back in my old 1st edition campaigns. Also 2nd edition campaigns, I just updated the stats. I've ran all of those. Very cool book.
Mr. Rhexx would you be willing to do videos on a different realm? I know there's a lot of info you can put out for the Forgotten Realms but other realms are harder to find info on. For example Greyhawk or Dragonlance.
Thank you for this excellent and detailed video. Also, thanks for pointing out certain important details like how undead themselves aren't automatically evil even though it's evil to create them. My longest lasting and strongest PC was a half celestial vampire (long story there lol) fighter, and was probably the most good (both in alignment and action) member of our party. It made for a lot of interesting role playing too.
Glad they nerfed those touch effects, on baldurs gate 2 losing levels after some undead attacks was annoying and little else. To make matters worse you could just lose levels again seconds from curing it with clerics spells...ರ╭╮ರ
+There are so many kinds of undea-- -Nah they are all different flavors of zombies and skeletons. +What about liches? -Those are magic flavored skeletons. +And Ghouls? -Paralisis flavored zombies +And Mummies? -Zombie with a skin. + And a wraith? - Ghost + Specter? - Ghost + Shadow? - Dark Ghost + I hate you - Me too.
I don't play D&D but I love the lore the books the comics all of it and I also love Marvel Superheroes. So I wanted to ask do you know what Venom's challenge rating would be if he was in the Forgotten Realms
i am not really a marvel fan (i watch some when my gf wants me to watch with her and that's it) but for the sake of answering your question i looked on venom's wiki to read the overview of his powers/abilities and compared that to several dnd creatures. i find it most likally for venam to be a cr 5 or maybe 6, making him on par with creatures like fire/water/air/earth elementals and vampire spawn.
Hey MrRhexx, long time fan, since the Skyrim days. Lutes and Dice is a great underrated channel. Folkard is really great at breaking down the stories in the publish adventures. His insight is great, deep and interesting. Rhys at Jetpack7 is also a young small channel and he does a great job of like how to play type of info. And I’m sure you are aware of AJ Pickett at TMG channel, he’s great and has also started doing lots of collaboration videos with others in your community. Anyway love your channel and your absolute enthusiasm. It’s always refreshing and informative. Oh and how could I forget to call out Jorphdan his channel is also one of my favorites. He does great overviews of lore compared to how you do a deep dive. Oh and Davvy Chapy he has entertainment value like yours. A great map maker I’ve recently found is 2-minute table top. Love his maps.
I always imagine a good lich that uses its need to consume souls as a way to punish the exceptionally bad criminals as a way to avoid them also going to the lower planes increasing the forces of evil. And while it would be terrible for common means to do this because you might get someone who is innocent, with magic you can actually force the criminal to tell the truth to find out if they actually caused the crimes, therefor you would be able to always be sure to not use this extreme punishment on someone that doesn't deserve it.
@@Orapac4142 Those things are always changing, you could probably game that system to make sure any "evil" things you have to do would be done without innocence sufferings. What if you sacrifice a "child" of an evil race? The larva of an Illithid would be a "child", or that of a red dragon, etc. What about polymorphing a murder into a child? You can always get out of things, especially when you live in a world where magic exists.
In order to give undead a level of terror in my world, i have created a small list of diseases that undead can transmit and get the players sick in a variety of different ways. Magical or not, many of these diseases can wreak havoc on a player if not addressed quickly
🎶"UNDEAD!"🎶 🎶"You better get up out the way"🎶 🎶"Tommorow we'll rise so let's fight today"🎶 🎶"And no, I don't give a fuk what you think or say"🎶 🎶"Cause we gonna rock this whole place anyway"🎶
Ty I'm currently running a grim dark set in Etharis(Grim Hollow) and one of my players has been using salt and now I have more cinematic reactions for it
Thanks for the video, didn’t know that undead were THAT overpowered, who would have tought that a simple zombie or skeleton could do so much permanent harm, really makes sense why you don’t see Villagers with showels goeing after them. Also, have you seens the Tanares RPG on kickstarter, it seems to be potentially good, but I don’t have expirience with distinguishing good 5e suplements on Kickstarters from alright ones, but I loved Grimm Hollow which you advertised.
@@LostInNumbers That makes much more sens, as it just seamed unresonable, but who was i to question negative energy. But the amount of desises you could contract from rotting corpse is still nothing to scoff at as well, common man don’t have access to prist whou could heal them.
A idea I had inspired by "V rising" is a world where vampires(and maybe undead as a whole) have been forgotten and are considered myth when they return from slumber and begin to amass their power. And the challenge for the players is a world that doesn't believe that vampires exist or ever existed to begin with and many of the vampire weaknesses are myths.
the D2 summon necro IMO, is the perfect necromancer archetype and and standard I compare all other necromancers I come across in various games. I would love to see somebody create a class for DnD that emulates that same feel you get in D2 rolling around with your death squad just picking up loot from the wake of destruction you leave behind!
When you started to talk about living zombies I was thinking about the so-called zombies of voodoo from early 20th century movies. They have no will but they are alive and under the control of a voodoo master
that video explains very well why (when i played baldur's gate 2) i only chose Undead Hunter Paladin as my group leader :D even after playing through the game multiple times, changing the group comp each time, there was always 1 constant: the undead hunter :D
Amusingly, there's quite a few magic items focused on keeping undead "alive". I think one is like "Shirt of gentle repose" that "alives" an undeads body. Allowing it to keep "functioning" as normal. It does however not affect the undead damage wise. Like, you can't suddenly sneak attack them or poison them. Well, it WILL affect the body. But not the hp or status of the undead.
dnd: there is a combination of spells in the forgotten realms that allow you to control a living being as if it whre an undead thrall anima beyond fantasy wizard with dominate life: look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power
Home brew rule we used successfully in 2nd Ed. Energy drained levels could be recovered, but took a day of rest for each level. If you got drained below Level 1, you died (and suffered whatever effects were in the monster description for someone killed by their attacks). And, when you regained levels, you did so at the minimum XP for that level - and even when you regained the final level, you only got to the starting XP for that level (meaning any XP progression you had made towards the next level was permanently lost). This kept undead really scary without being totally OP.
I really appreciate your videos, the amount of detail and work you put in to your videos can never be found anywhere else from what ive seen. If you don't mind, i have always been intrested in the undead that come from the Shadowfell called "Nightshades" i believe. Mostly because they look amazing. Please make a video on the subject. Great Work
Yep, I play pathfinder. A number of the more powerful and often incorporial undead Had level drain & stats drain that, if reduced to 0, would raise the character as another of it's kind (usually with less hp and no ability to do it themselves.
I've been playing D&D for over 35 years since Basic/AD&D so I think the new players in 5E have it too easy against the undead. Like MrRhexx mentioned the earlier editions' undeads' energy drain was scary because gaining levels was much harder than in 5E. 3.5E had negative levels which you didn't lose class levels permanently but rather temporarily. There were also undead that drained ability score points -- which was even worse the level drain because there was no ASI back then!
Personally I'm rather perplexed that they didn't just have players de-level temporarily, IE until a long rest. That makes it feel less unfun in the scope of the campaign, but maintains the difficulty of the encounter.
Proper dangerous undead and intelligent schemes of a powerful lich can be extremely scary, if well done. In 5E its too often that the undead become just trash monsters, if anything players will be unable to kill a undead that is immune to non-magic weapons, but only early on, or if they never get any items from their DM , and most groups are stacked with magic items like crazy, which removes basically any challenge from monsters, unless the players are completely incompetent.
As someone who have fought Shadows in 3.5, *Mixing salt into a vampires gravedirt so they become shadows DOES NOT better the situation*
You'd then have to deal with vengeful shadows and an angry vampire in any form is not something I personally enjoy messing with.
I know it sounds paradoxical to create a living zombie, but the origins of zombies, from the culture that developed Voodoo as we know it now - their method of zombie creation was literally the control of a living human, like putting them in a permanent hypnotized state, where they could only follow basic commands. Thus very slow to move/react.
So in a way a Bard is the best "Necromancer" if you're going off tradational means
@@ExeErdna That is very true. Even could flavor it with a magic rat catcher esk flute
It was not permanent they would use pufferfish toxins to paralyze the target and bury them in a shallow grave for a while or they used another drug called devils breath to make the target more susceptible to influences
@@Nob911 is it devils breath or angel dust? Cause I’ve heard both terms, unless they’re two separate substances and I’m just an idiot
@@ExeErdna Well, if you want to be historically traditional, it's more like there's a single magic caster that's a combo of artificer, cleric, wizard, and bard.
Turns out magical beliefs are rarely modest or consistent. Almost all ancient magic was religious and historical in nature, and usually involved a variety of rituals and material components.
Just want to add that back in the early days, alongside level drain and other nasty effects:
a) undead moved silently in dungeons
b) darkvision was based off of heat signatures (infravision)
OH YEAH, it was infravision and you was infrared. Undead were room temp!
@@chrishammock4544 Yup! This is why you needed a cleric in the party--they weren't just healbots!
@@Dyundu They aren't in 5e either.
Rhexx: "Creating undead is always an evil act."
Archliches: "Bruh..."
@asdrubale bisanzio Incorrect, Archliches don't exist in the 5e format and have only ever existed in 2e and as good aligned undead.
@asdrubale bisanzio i think you're thinking of demiliches as being more powerful liches; archliches are the good-aligned ones, for example certain elven communities would have one to guard their valuable areas
@@CorvusCorone68 You're thinking of the baelnorn, which is the elven version of a lich.
Archliches CAN be good-aligned, but can also be just really, really powerful liches. Vecna, for instance, was an archlich, and he was about as evil as you can get.
Yeah archliches don't exist in 5E..but still, don't confuse them with demiliches. Demiliches are typical weaker then a standard lich in terms of raw stats( although they have a bunch of cool hacks that IMO can make them more dangerous in some situations) but archliches would be far stronger then either if you reworked them for 5E. But yeah, Mystra forbid we have good aligned undead, that might confuse the new players and make the game less "accessible" if we kept things that are actually cool and unique. Plus they went to so much effort to nerf the tarrasque, it would defeat the purpose if they added more monsters thay could provide an actual challenge at lv 20
@@agentchaos9332 Not really, no. Demiliches equal regular liches in physical stats, and far surpass them in mental ones.
D&D: Where we even have lore to explain how the undead dramatically break through their graves and coffins.
I loved that :D
Honestly, it's a little bit cringe. People need to get over their fantasy hurdles - none of it makes sense! If you're willing to accept a world filled with magic, you shouldn't apply a post-1700's understanding of science.
@@monsieurdorgat6864
I think both works. It just depends on someone's taste. What I don't like is when people are complaining or even hate on one of those options when they think their kind of fun is superior.
We all just wanna have fun and chill in our way. It's sad to see so many people unconsciously trying to prevent that for others because they tend to like one more than the other.
@@Kino_Cartoon I'm not putting down anyone specific, that's just my take.
I'm definitely not going to hate on anyone who's not already a raging lunatic.
But it's an open forum, and I think if someone is willing to put their idea out there for a response, it's not going to hurt them to say I don't like it.
But to your point, people all have their own level where they arbitrarily decide is an appropriate amount of realism. Being a scientist, mine is pretty low because you're breaking rules pretty early from a physics perspective, so I prefer applying a psychological, sociological, and historical lens to fantasy since it doesn't clash as badly.
But if you don't know much about science, applying it to magic might make more sense to you.
@@monsieurdorgat6864
Oh I wasn't referring to you when I describe what I don't like. I just wanted to add that thought because when we talk about behavior than that's what I dislike.
What someone prefers to use in their fantasy doesn't really matter to me as long as they have fun and it doesn't inflict harm.
I might not be a scientist but I am a computer science student and we do learn about scientific analysis and research processes because our university is grounded on mainly theoretically approach towards computer science. But I'm not quite sure if your taste of fantasy is determined by your education. I think it's more of a personal preference.
My friends and I love to play D&D and we are a mix of sci-fi and fantasy fans.
You might not *need* an explanation for something fantastic when lot's of things already break realistic physics but thinking of it is still exiting.
That's e.g. why I'm a big fan of the magic system of HunterXHunter.
Nen makes zero sense but it has an interesting explanation and it's limitations are also great.
In DnD I'm playing an artificer sourcerer and I've explained that I can get spells slots that I use for articier spells back because I power my inventions through the energy I create with her cursed arm. Her wild magic is practically a mobile power source.
I didn't need to do that but it's lot's if fun duribz role play.
The described mechanic is also something that can give me ideas new ideas e.g. for a surprise attack of zombies burtsing out of stone statues but they can be hold back by a wooden door afterwards.
I’ve always loved undead but the 5e necromacer wizard really needs an overhaul, or better yet we need a class specifically dealing with raising and buffing the dead. I’d also love to see a Paladin that harnesses negative energy.
PS cannot wait for a hobgoblin video.
3.5 unearthed arcana has paladins if tyranny and slaughter. They use negative energy. There is also the bone knight in the eberron campaign setting. That is a literal necromantic knight. Hopefully you can find some 5e versions.
I am actually working on a necromancer class with a good animation subclass, which I am soon going to post on four dnd reddits
2e and 3e had spells that healed and buffed the undead. Just try to adapt them to 5e.
Closest paladin we got to using negative energy is the oath breaker
I normally compensate with bone,claw, or ivory equipment and armor. A pole arm with sharp bone tip, carved bone blade can channel some forms of nercomancy spells (depending on the weapons)
My favorite combo is ro plague touch daggers/knives
One of the most memorable moments I have ever had in D&D was when our DM brought back one of the player's paladins who had died like 3 months ago real word time (he had talked to the player and got their okay first) as the death knight minion of the big bad. That was a real jaw drop moment.
I just remember our gnome ranger having his hit point maximum reduced by wraths like three adventures in a row. The first time he died and got resurrected - the other two times he simply had "that feeling again"
Though your adventure sounds cooler, I can imagine both awe and horror one must have felt.
Good thing the DM asked for permission. My DM killed off my character in the 3rd or 4th session and forced me to play a genie warlock who possessed my fiend warlock's body.
@@arian512 now that sounds like a planed rail road
One time I made the players go to a graveyard full of zombies that kept grappling them and dragging them out. Turns out the zombies were protecting the villagers from a wraith, and being level 1 anytime the players got downed the zombies would grab them and drag them to safety.
Everyone loved it
"He talked to the player and got their okay first" is the most weenie thing I've ever heard
Reasons why I really like Undead as foes in my games:
1) Low maintenance: The dead don't need food, water, air, light, or rest. They don't form unions, seldom complain about poor working conditions, and are scary as shit.
2) The dead make great inhabitants for abandoned castles, remote keeps, underground dungeons, and generally any place where you don't want to have to explain how the bad guys live.
3) LOTS of book and film lore to draw from! All you have to do to describe an undead horde is flash pics from Army of Darkness or just about any Ray Harryhausen film.
4) Availability. Need recruits? Find any cemetery or ancient battlefield. Some will come with their own gear!
The problem: if necromancers keep raiding abandoned battlefields and cemeteries in your world, why does the general population start wisening up and burn bodies in mass to prevent them rising as undead?
"What would you say if all those honorable soldiers, that lie here on this ancient battlefield, could hear you right know and be whitness of your necromantic cruelty?!"
"Honestly just one word: RISE!"
And undead never betray you . (It might depend what kind of undead but if you can control them it's going to be 100%.)
I always allowed characters to eventually regain lost levels from energy drain at an exponent rate per week. For example if you lost 2 levels it took 4 weeks of rest to get the levels back. Three levels was 9 weeks etc. This allowed the undead to be a menace and allowed them to create new undead, but gave players a chance to recover what they had rightfully earned. This allowed the effects of an undead attack to effect a module or even a campaign. But in the end players could recover what they had earned given enough time. That seemed fair to me.
so if they manage to lv up during some encounters, will they get their progress added to their regained experience?
I've always used the Baldur's Gate method, that energy drain can be cured by the restoration spell.
@@Ed_man_talking9 Yes that is fair.
@@daviddaugherty2816 That was the only use for the Restoration spell in 1e. Undo the level draining effects of undead and the ability score draining of spells like Feeblemind.
@@singledad1313 yep and it blew. Restoration was 5th or 6th level, so either very very rare or very expensive. Imagine working for weeks or months to gain a level only to have it yanked with one hit.
What most people never realize, undead are the most extreme of extreme sports enthusiasts. When the Wild Ride comes, all the undead arise with their skateboards to join, and only the bravest of mortals dare to impede them.
@asdrubale bisanzio Skaterbro lich, I believe is what that thread ended up being about. neckbeardia did a video on it a while back.
@@ornu01 That's a good one. I'm glad there are still people who know about it.
I remember that story. One of my favorites. One day, i'll make a oneshot based on that, one day...
@@bumblingbureaucrat6110 Yeah, 'Bored Lich' is a legitimate form of horror comedy.
@@ornu01 DAM sounds like i got stuff to watch on em if i ever do so. proably as i grind in a game
I really appreciate the older versions of Undead. Yeah they were a pain in the ass to fight but you knew you were in for a fight. It also meant my cleric characters would be totally Kick-Ass.
It's honestly really cool how undead used to be super dangerous in that they permanently weakened your character, it would make fights with skeletons and zombies a whole lot more terrifying if that was still the case.
1) undead generally yes, skeletons and zombies no
2) it probably works best in grittier game systems than 5e when the characters are more disposable, such as the case for dnd 1e, dnd 2e and basic, as well as Dungeon Crawl Classic (a modern spin on those early edition with more competent Fighting Men). It is only fun if the players expect their characters to die and expect their once prestine randomly generated abillity scores wittle down and they expect to just roll a new random character
Just sounds like a pain to me. If it was still like that and the dm had my party fight the undead I would just assume they’re going for a party wipe.
@@defensivekobra3873 I would bring it as variant rules alongside gritty realism.
@@IdiotinGlans
It's not _just_ a matter of the tone of the campaign, in 5e you have a lot of agency and controll and customization available to you, becuase in 5e you are meant to be attached to your character and each character should be special and heroic. It's why rolling for stats is now an optional rule, you are meant to be empowered with it.
Conversely back in those older editions rolling for stats was the norm and dictated what races/ classes you could choose from, with characters who have 18 or higher in a stat being absurdly powerful. If your character died, you just made a new one, and at level 1 their death was often inevetable. In that edition, it was less about making an interesting character with an compelling background from the start, and more about letting your character's personality grow "organically" and letting them be shaped by their past experiences, provided they even make it past 3rd level. The 2nd edition dungeon master's guide compares the early levels of an adventurer to their early childhood. Quote from that book:
"Did Rath the Dwarf save by fool-hardily charging into battle when he was a mere 1st level? If he did, the odds are good that the player will try it again and begin to play Rath as a bold and reckless fellow
On the other hand, if Rath was clobbered the first few times he rushed in, the player would begin to play Rath as a prudent and cautious fellow"
Like you get what i mean? The enviorment in 2e and basic edition are way better enviorment for permanent energy drain, becuase character death was much less of a big deal and characters were sort of meant to develop their character's personalities based on what happens to them. If a 2nd level fighter gets their strength halved, that's no big deal in 2e, but a massive annoyance in 5e
and make paladins and clerics more depended on.
Of course the best anti-strahd, SALT
I was thinking a thermonuclear warhead, or handing him a portable hole and shoving a bag of holding into it.
Salt is good too, I suppose.
Dose strahd have a grave to mix the salt in? Othere then "pocket salting" him.
Why not garlic bread?
@@jmhaugen4757 use a wand of spheres of annihilation.
I was just wondering what it be like if he was reduced to a shadow.
Ah, undead. One of my favorite things. Hell, one of my first questions about any fantasy rpg is; "can I be a necromancer?"
Not too keen about necromancy in DnD 5e though, at least when it comes to undead minions. Luckily, I love the necromancer that doesn't use undead minions too, and reflavoring is a thing.
Just curious, why aren't you satisfied with undead minions in 5e
@@defensivekobra3873 I don't like how you have to reassert control over them every day, and would have much rather preffered if they were under your control indefinitely, but there was a limit to how many undead you could control at a time. It is also a bit problematic in discussions about playing a good-aligned necromancer, since it leads to arguments about the potential danger of you losing control over your minions.
You are limited to low CR creatues, but can make a lot of them, which leads to huge hordes that slows the game down, and is also a hassle to manage. I would have preffed to have a small squad of stronger undead, which would not only solve those issues, but it just seems to me that a necromancer who travels a lot, and wants to avoid any troubles with the general public that most likely don't approve of their practise, would find it a lot easier to travel around with a small squad of undead rather than an army.
All in all, they made being a necromancer who uses undead minions such a chore, and if you do go about it you need an army for them to stay relevant through the game. You are also limited to only using humanoid corpses, which is a bit boring, but can also be a problem if those aren't available.
The Summon Undead spell from Tasha's is great though, and I wouldn't mind playing a necromancy wizard and just use that spell to get an undead minion. Or I could just pick it up as a warlock, that works too.
@@TheHornedKing I totally agree, though your DM might rule different:
The wording isn't unmistakable there. "Reassert control" for 24 h more could mean that you were to control the skeleton for three days that you casted the spell three timrs on. The "current" 24h-period could be the "latest" 24h-period.
This way you could cast Animate Dead (being a 6th lvl Wizard) at least two to three times a day. Doing so each day for a week gives you three weeks worth of time for your adventures, so that you don't need to cast this spell in the meantime. And you'd have four skeletons at hand, all of which could wield a wand of catapult or an amulet of counterspell.
Do the same thing later on with wights and you might happen to put a flame tongue or an oathbow to a good use! And besides...: Your undead don't care if you store them in a Demiplane, or a bag of holding, or if you invent an undead storing spell - they'd be fine and prove to be great backup!
Oh - and making your skeletons speak comes also to great use: this way, after attuning to a ring of spell storing, they ALL could cast Summon Undead. If you got a divine sorcerer friend, they may be also casting it as a twinned spell
Also, you could invent a ring - as a common or uncommonmagic item - that makes the control over your undead last indefenetely.
First is was Orcus, now the undead, thank you so much for covering my favorite things in Dungeons and dragons!!!!
Oh boy- So you're telling me that if I were to play a gnome cleric who runs around throwing salt at people, he would *eventually* be super useful? Sweet!
And salty.
@@charlessaintpe8574only his victims would be salty
@@lin1130 self-seasoned smoked beef
Yes a thousand times yes!
Kill them with highblood pressure, undead have blood pressure right?
14:10
Just imagine some old man/lady sweeping their doorway when they throw salt over their shoulder and hitting a Lich that was walking down the street disguised and having the area the salt landed on burst into blue flames and partiality revealing his undead form beneath...
What would you say to try and get out of this situation Alive?
I mean, if a lich is anywhere near you, you would have been killed sooner or later. This is basically just a speedrun
Make it super freaky and weird for him so he will be like nah, you crazy and run strait back to the crypt.
@@zawwin1846 "ohhh! Is that a bone in your pocket or are happy to see me? ;)" lol
I'm sorry all I can picture is a lich doing that marilyn monroe pose as it tries to keep its robes down as it's being blown up by blue flame XD
@@supercomputer5607 Hahaha Thank You for that mental image! XD
Now I see everyone's fascination with the undead, I could see most things mentioned in this video being incredibly fun in a campaign! Isn't there some kind of earth telekinesis or something in D&D? You could use that to mix salt with the vampire's grave dirt, right?
Mold Earth !
@@MI24CL3 There we go, it's how we defeat BBEVG
(Might also work on Sheeptar:The Sheep King)
I’ve been talking about the undead for a while, necromancy doesn’t make any sense in 5th edition, it needs an overhaul for sure!!!
One of the worst-designed schools in 5th.
Don't see why, 5e necromancers are *powerful* without being as broken as ye olde 3.5e necromancers. Why have an overhaul?
Undead aren't even harmed by positive-energy spells like cure wounds. What were they thinking?
@@Erick7Greenday the ONLY edition where that happened was 3.5e, and also it's really stupid. Nobody is gonna be stupid enough to try to cast Cure Wounds on a skeleton for a meager 1d8+wis dmg when sacred flame or a fucking mace deals just as much damage, healing spells are weaker than damage spells in terms of raw numbers, so why not just use a fucking damage spell from the start? Guiding Bolt is right there, ready to use
The necromancy school should just be flat out more powerful than comperable spells from other schools but always at a risk/cost. It's supposed to be a school of dangerous and forbidden magics. Make it feel like the magic itself is barely under control and trying to kill you or your friends! Deciding to use a necromancy spell should involve considering more than just action economy and spell slot.
Strahd: PREPARE TO MEET YO- Wait... where's your rogue and cleric?
*Cleric and the rogue proceeds to mix the salt into the dirt of strahd's bed*
Rogue: You sure this'll work?
*unholy strahd screams*
Cleric with a sh!t eating grin: oh. I'm pretty sure it worked.
XD someones gonna be pissing salt for a long time
That cleric thought like a rogue
@@mugenokami2201 aka the trickery domain cleric. XD
@@patrickdees5256 I wanna see more druids think like rouges too
Strahd may be the only vampire to avoid beeing beaten in that way considering his....special prison. Or they might think its hilarious and let it happen anyway. xD
Old undead skills sound more like antiliving.
That's because they're made of antilife. Negative energy heals the undead and harms the living, and positive energy does the opposite.
Okay, but I also wanna know about the other guys' stuff and the alternative lores. To focus on one setting is to leave out so many cool ideas from other minds. Make another video, please. "What else they don't tell you about the undead"
There's a lot of Undead, I'm guessing/hoping there will be more videos!
Me 2! :D
Some seem to be really unhappy with what the 5e necromancer seems to be now.
But I merely see this as a starting point!
ua-cam.com/play/PLNdLM6w6lruXma-hG5IiN7Uwy2Sk9Zrt_.html
I one shot the divination wizard in my campaign with finger of death. The party killed the big bad the next round. Now he was playing an amnesiac who purposely, magically, erased his mind of stuff he did in his past but his divination magic was constantly bringing back his memories. Therefore since the master who controlled his undead form died I had him roll 2 d20. If they were the same number, he’d regain his memories from before he died. He did. Now he’s on a mission to restore his humanity and the party has no idea how to handle an undead teammate
XD hahahaha now thats a "shit went to hell party still won, now what the fuck is rattling? OH FUCK THE WIZARDS BACK! but now a undead and got more memories than he started what to do now"
I am glad you uploaded this as I will be playing Curse of Strahd campaign run by a DM friend of mine. They are allowing me to play a resurrected Tiefling Skeleton by the name of Itward so having this new knowledge of undead in mind is extremely helpful. :D
This video is info relevant to 1st edition dnd only. It will not help you as a player in Curse of Strahd, as we have different lore now
@@defensivekobra3873 Well, all knowledge is good knowledge.
@@defensivekobra3873 Let's salt Strahd's sou... coffin!
I've been obsessed with undead nearly all my life, and I've always wanted some source of lore detailing both the lore "mechanics" involved in it, but also the differences between many of the similar types (ghoul ghast ghost etc)
Thank you very, very much.
Ghouls are ever hungry...they literally eat whatever they kill and heal that way. If they haven't eaten in quite awhile they will stop and eat even while being attacked, that is how bad the hunger has them. Naturally formed ghouls died from hunger and feel a never ending hunger in their undeath due to this reason.
I'll add one you did not ask about due to the ghoul's background...and this is a Wendingo. A wendingo is created from a man that actively killed and ate other humans. ALL wendingo were once human that fed on other humans. In death they become huge lumbering monstrocities that continue to crave human flesh. They are hulking beasts of rage and hunger that cannot be fully controlled beyond 'x is the enemy y is the friend'. They will kill and eat x and leave y alone, but must be put away or restrained after the battle as it's rage and hate can only be focused as long as an enemy is present. This is why they are solitary undead and rarely found in an undead horde or city. These things can stand 10-15 feet tall with hands the size of a large adult's torso to give you an idea of how monstrous they are.
A ghast is like a ghoul but the hunger is not constant and is more intelligent. They can talk and handle mildly complex ideas. If a ghoul survives long enough, there is always a small chance they will manage to become a ghast. Ghasts are capable of utilizing their former hunger to go into a berserk like state.
A ghost is an immaterial being lacking a physical body. Can be good or evil. They can speak and interact with the world around them through limited telekinesis. Some can possess the living in order to better interact with it. They can drain the life away from the living through direct contact but can choose not to do so, death in this way creates a ghost of the killed. This ghost is NOT controlled by the one that created it. Ghosts created naturally are bound to something that was important to them in life and cannot get too far from it. If killed a ghost will reform again until the item it is bound to is destroyed or it's reason for lingering on is accomplished. Those created through unnatural means do not have this limitation but similarly will not reform if destroyed.
These are all the mythology around the undead. D&D usually changes things to make them more fitting or suited to a game setting.
I recommend the Libris Mortis, it is better than this video.
My favorite kind of undead is created through Contractmancy. It can be a long drawn out process where a necromancer has to write a magical contract (and many times it is written in the users own blood to solidify the bond) by which their minion will be beholden to. The magic user then reaches into the Void Between Worlds (or Limbo for your reginal equivalent) and plucks a lost soul (even this process in of itself could drain or kill the user, becoming lost in the Void themselves). This is where the process becomes tricky, but also highly rewarding. A good Contractmancer can actually find souls who specifically will fit the job required of the undead creature. Need a really good body guard? Find the soul of a lost warrior. Need a really good scout? Find the soul of a woodland ranger or rouge. The caster then issues the contract to the soul, and the soul agrees or disagrees to the terms and conditions. This is of course, what makes many Necromancers not bother with contractmancy, as ripping souls out of the ether and throwing them into a corpse (or reigniting the animus) is much simpler and does not require a second parties consent. However, when you DO get the souls consent, the resulting Undead entity will be much more intelligent, wiser and strategically minded than any other form of Undead one can typically raise from a fresh grave. Many contractmancers use skeletons, ghouls or ghosts as "physical forms" as they can provide the lost soul with a stronger sense of autonomy.
It can be a very long winded process. But the skeleton soldiers you get from it are some of the best of the best. Especially because the actual soul inhabiting the body WANTS and ENJOYS being "alive" in the material world again, able to enact their profession and skills like they did long ago. This is also a way for magic users to bypass a faded animus, as the lost souls could truly be from any era. And once more, this is also what can make contractmancy extremely dangerous.
A powerful double edged sword that can result in one of the most powerful undead armies ever created.
I didn't know about this concept, thanks for sharing! Any good stories about this? Wonder what kind of contracts there are out there.
I still contend that 2nd edition was the best edition, even with THAC0, which is actually pretty comprehensive if you use the optional additional rules. Certain kinds of armor defended particularly well against one weapon and exceptionally poorly against another was modeled. Rules like this made blunt weapons additionally good against plate armor, because that's historically the best kind of weapon to actually use against that armor. Big nasty dents on the outside of the armor tend to leave really nasty effects on the inside. Maybe it's just because of my age, but 2nd ED just seemed to have the most (I hate to use this term) soul and charm.
THAC0 wasn't really that complicated. People just like to *pretend* it was when they do the "back in my day" speeches. Really, it was just a number you had to beat to hit.
@@daviddaugherty2816 I don't get the THAC0 hate at all. It made it incredibly easy to figure out what you needed to hit your target and allowed combat to move along so much faster. All the variables for your "to hit" roll were already worked out and factored into your THAC0. All you had to do was subtract the target's AC and you had your target number. For some reason most younger player's equate THAC0 with 2e, but it actually evolved during 1e. It did become official in 2e though. Out of curiosity, I just dug out some of the old character sheets from my group's campaign in the mid 80's. We had THAC0's on the sheets way back then, years before 2e.
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@@singledad1313 Mostly it is due to laziness. Why deal with the pre calculations required for THAC0 when you can just have an AC and I have my TH number added to my roll. I don't need any math. Long as my number is higher than yours...done. THAC0 had, while minor, math and calculation that you had to look up in order to find and place. Everything after THAC0 was simplified in order to make things smoother. The armor class you are hitting against has a number, your bonuses and such is on your end and already written down. It speeds things up for the DM.
@@Nempo13 That's the beauty of THAC0. Everything, other than temporary buffs, is already factored into your THAC0 before you even sit down to play. All race , ability score, and magic bonuses, skills, feats, all that stuff is already calculated in the THAC0. Once combat begin, all you do is roll a die. For the DM THAC0 is even easier. Player subtracts his die roll from his THAC0 and he has the AC he hit. Blurd's THAC0 is 14, he rolls a 17, that means he hits AC -3. He tells the DM "I hit AC -3". In stead of rolling a d20 and then adding this, this, oh yea this, but not this this round, and can't forgot this, and that. And then the next round, the player goes through the exact same process, with the exact some bonuses, but has to add them all back in. And then "Oh crap! I forgot I had this bonus last round! Can I change my result from last round?" Seriously, every single game session I've played from 3.5e onward has been like this. A combat round that would take 2 minutes tops in the "bad old days" takes 30 minutes or more now.
Old school energy drain was crazy brutal.
I want more,undead is my favorite and my dm is letting me be a necromancer like in older additions
Check out Grimm hollow, there's a really cool lich transformation
Necromancy is just a Wizard school.
What do you mean by that exactly? HD control limit but otherwise your undead stay loyal forever? You apply skeleton/ zombie template to specific monster? What do you mean with "necromancer like older editions"???
@@defensivekobra3873 he's letting me control a certain cr type of undead and letting make certain undead per spell slot but also requiring the body of certain ones but he doesn't let me make certain creatures like vampires or something like that,and my undead don't have the crazy debuffs he was talking about
Don't forget your trusty Body Bag™️!
Hearing about the "living undead thrall" is giving me an idea for a player character that is one such victim and starts their quest seeking out their master with only the words "Find me." being the last directive. What would they do in order to find their master? What lengths do they go to with the effect of the magic controlling their mind? What happens when/if they mind their master or if their master is killed?
You could even be a zealot barbarian and/or an orc to add more of that "endless march" feel to the character, showing that they really CANNOT give up until their mission is done.
One problem, living zombies barely have their own mind at all. So no class skill usage, you also go last in every round of combat to show your thinking is severely hindered. So no rage, no feats, certainly NOTHING resembling spells or prayers. You wouldn't be competent in any skills either due to how slow and confused your own thoughts would be.
Now if you are simply a Thrall. Your mind has been taken over but you are still useful in that you are able to think. There is a reason mindflayer minions are rather scary. They have their mind and all their faculties in tact.
Ooh, I love to run Gothic horror stories so this will be great!
As someone who regularly plays undead, I love seeing this video.
I love the idea of undead being any alignment... so... in theory... you could have a town of friendly zombies or skeletons just hanging out and doing stuff like farming... heck you could even have these zombies hire heroes to accomplish tasks for them
Paladin:
Stumbles upon an old Town appears to not be on the map...
...scratches his head...
"Where the Fuck am I"
...
...Hello...
.whisper..
Oh Hi didn't see you there
Looks down next to him and see a Gnome standing there near the entrance to the Town
"Where am I Gnome"
Gnome say "Dead"
Paladin looks at the Gnome...
Hmmm...Dead huh
Start uttering a chant and lifting up is right arm in a Fist
"BEGONE FROM MY SIGHT I SMITE THE"
...Gnome "WHooo there fellow...
Slow down"...
"This is DeadTown...thats the name you asked where you are the" Gnome replied
The Paladin let's out a sigh of relief
"Oh so where is everyone" the Paladin asks the Gnome replies "Dead"
The Paladin now confused by the replie
Ask the Gnome "who are you"
Gnome answer "Bill"
Paladin says "just Bill"
Gnome answer again "Bill Door"
Hehehe...slowly disappears
Ps...the Paladin looks to his right and see a Zombie in a farm field towling the earth...the Paladin asks "what you farming"
The Zombie replies Mmm...Cornnn...what did you think I was going to say...BRAINs classic Paladin doesn't understand the world, but goes around imposing their Might
The Paladin then says "Fist bump"...
The Farmer Zombie Fist bumps the Paladin...
...Poof...(Zombie turns to ash)
I call that SMITE
Planescape torment has a city of undead just like that
Why farming if they don't eat tho
@@Caio-ow5tm To sell the crops to others!
@@Caio-ow5tm Probably just to munch on out of habit. Would probably give a few chuckles to see a family of skeletons share some bread just for it to fall on their chairs and get eaten by rats.
'Protection from negative energy' would protect oneself from undead effect under a certain lvl. Having a priest or paladin in an undead fighting group was important. A mage would do in a pinch dependent on his schools of magic. That or lots of scrolls.
This is why in 2nd edition ur DM often told you make two or three back up characters. Ed Greenwood ftw. My Gary(sorry Gary)
I haven't played D&D 2e in almost a decade, ever since my gaming group wanted to try out 3.5e and quickly moved into Pathfinder. I've now become the semi-permanent DM of our group, and this hit me like a nostalgia train, at the same time reminding me of all the incredible stuff Undead used to have.
Welp, excuse me, I have to make a few dozen adjustments to my special Undead BBEGs and Lieutenants now... :D
I created a few spells to solve most the problems, you guys might have with the 5e necromancer:
(If anyone wants the full detailed versions - just ask! I just wasn't sure if anybody wanted me to; soooo... here is some inspiration for you guys :-) )
Grant Voice (2nd lvl transmutation) grants any creature a humanoid voice. Sounds silly? That is until you realise, that all your undead can now use the Ring of Spell Storing and the Wand of Magic Missile... (Have you ever thought of this one divine sorcerer that twin-casts Summon Undead on 4-5th level? Now you can have 36 of those)
Unlife Flame (7th lvl necromancy) burns away the flesh of living humanoids, transforming them into skeletons that you control permanently - like Finger of Death - but with skeletons!
Embrace thy Bones (4th level necromancy) allows you to raise a group of creatures of any type as skeletons or zombies using the Animate Dead spell, if they die within the next 24 hours. Skeleton Warhorses? Yes. Zombie Beholders? Also yes! Skeleton Giants? Yesssss!
This, though, doesn't work with create undead.
Soliders of the Dust (6th lvl Divination) grants ALL YOUR UNDEAD the pack taktics trait for concentration, up to 10 minutes - dodgeing plate-armored zombies frontline, pike-wielding skeletons second line, archers and mages backline... The enemy never stood a chance...
Enslavement of a master (8t lvl necromancy) works the best when you are in an all-wizard-party: If the enchanted object is ever to be the phylactery of a lich in spe, his/her ritual to become one fails, transforms him/her into a boneclaw and makes you its master (if your heart bears enough hate, that is - and no other restrictions matter).
What is better than having an undead CR 12 assassin-puppy? Having an immortal undead CR 12 killer-assassin-puppy that you can affect with True Polymorph :D
And the most dire one:
Bound By Bones (9th level necromancy) is to be cast on a willing, living creature. Should this creature ever become an undead or cause an undead to be summoned through it, you control that very undead. You can have a number of summoned undead (which inkludes skeletons and NIGHTWALKERS alike) equal to your proficiency bonus + 1 (just imagine controlling 7 nightwalkers!). There is, however, no limit to the number of undead you can control, if they are DIRECTLY made from the ex-living creature: this includes wights, mummies, vampires, death knights, and dracoliches (but not normal liches - they do swap bodies too often)
I didn't want to believe undead got hit with such a hard nerf. Pulled out my 3.0 rulebook and looked at the 5.0 as a comparison. (I just recently started playing 5E after about 10+ years of not playing. Wow, just wow. Thank you for the lore video. I imagine these take an incredible amount of time to produce and appreciate you for doing it.
Gave me an idea for an antagonist who creates good undead and made sure that the effect of touching them is the alignment change.
oh that's AWESOME
Seems partially more creepy to me than the oldschool undead-doomstay campain. A world of pure-hearted people is just so... I can't imagine it...
@@herma-morashegorath6215 that's sad when you think about it
I know...
But your idea remains remarkable!
I just finished Volume 14 of Overlord and I really need this right now.
Thanks for doing this! I have an undead warlock/life cleric character and I was trying to figure out how I wanted to create my character’s patron. Since my DM is making a world to accommodate the tragic love story between my life goddess and undead patron I wanted to be able to provide enough information on my end to give towards that. My character’s purpose is to discover the past of her patron who can’t remember anything before he became undead and his lover, the goddess, can’t tell him what he forgot. That’s the bare bones of the story at least. Forgive the pun. Anyway, the goddess bestows their blessings on the character because they need that character to help the patron discover the past and return her lover to her. That’s why she CAN be contracted to both the patron and the goddess despite the opposing natures.
My group plays Dragon's Den, an older Czech System. Life drain is still a thing there, and our party lost about 7 levels in total between ourselves. It was a long campaign of vengeance after that
Never stop making videos, my dude.
interesting alternate methods of dealing with undead-
what we used to do was reduce the character's level
but they regained 1 level per day, with earned experience being banked
this made the undead scary, but not game-changing
if they killed you, you died and became undead
but if you survived, eventually you would recover
as all living creatures have a link to the Positive Material Plane
the drained energy would return
They also don't tell you that the undead are incredibly talented dancers and musicians.
CAUSE THIS IS THRILLER! THRILLER NIGHT, AND NO ONE'S GONNA SAVE YOU FROM THE BEAST ABOUT TO STRIKE!
80's reference, the kids will love that. like if this makes you feel old, makes you feel nostalgic, or makes you feel awesome because that song will never stop being cool.
I am getting my party to a portion of the campaign where they are starting to face undead. This video was amazing! Please do a series of videos like the dragon ones on each type! I love this!
With circle of spores druid I want to have it as like vines and fungus magically grow around it and it's actually the plants moving it like muscles. So the cleric can't get all hissy
I appreciate how you went back and talked about the abilities of the OG undead in D&D.
Making always being evil reminds me of a sacred type I remember hearing of. Where holy people offer themselves up to be sacred undead guardians to guard a site.
Yeah, it always being evil seems to have been retconed by 2e, but this guy doesn't seem to get that retcones happened, or that 1e was literally just a prototype.
MrRhexx please have more undead videos soon. Keeping to the F. R. is fine by me, I just love everything about them.
“Creating undead is always an evil act”
Circle of Spores Druid would like to know your location.
MrRhexx: Fighting the undead is one of the hardest, and frankly scariest jobs for any group of adventures to take.
DM randomly rolling dice behind the screen and asking everyone to make a perception check: Am I a joke to you?
Undead are EASILY my favorite enemy type. Dnd did necromancy RIGHT... At least for the monsters *cries in necromancer wizard*
3.5 necromancer wizard and the Dread Necromancer were decent.
@@Orapac4142 In comparison to other classes though?
That clerics fight with maces is not only to shatter the bones of undead skeletons. But also because according to Christianity they are not allowed to shed blood, so breaking bones is a workaround. This is why Otto who was a clergyman and, brother to William the Conqueror, used a mace in the Hastings campaign. It is probably depicted on the Tapestry of Balieu.
*"Time to make an Undead Campaign with Cleric and Paladins!"*
Gotta pull a Joecat and call you cleric only team the A-Men
@@hossdelgado626 ~N I C E~
Undeath are by far my favorite trope in fantasy, whether fighting them as a pally or commanding them as a shadowknight or necromancer, the spooky places where they "unlive" are just awesome. 🖤
Funny - just finished rewatching "Basically Liches".
This video has a lot of good information for an Undead centric campaign that I have been working on bit by bit for about two years. I'll need to remember to come back to this as a reference as I work on it more.
I remember reading an old school dnd magazine and having at least 3bpages of it dedicated to the writer shitting on dnd cause he lost 3 levels to undeads lol
Yay Lords of Darkness!!!! That book got a LOT of use back in my old 1st edition campaigns. Also 2nd edition campaigns, I just updated the stats. I've ran all of those. Very cool book.
Would love to see you do a dragon lance episode…. Something about the lore of the world
I've always wanted to play a Skeleton in a D&D campaign, always seemed like it could be fun.
Mr. Rhexx would you be willing to do videos on a different realm? I know there's a lot of info you can put out for the Forgotten Realms but other realms are harder to find info on. For example Greyhawk or Dragonlance.
Glad to hear that you’re building a good community. Good luck with the followers
Did I just watch a D&D UA-camr get sponsored by a D&D UA-camr?
Thank you for this excellent and detailed video. Also, thanks for pointing out certain important details like how undead themselves aren't automatically evil even though it's evil to create them. My longest lasting and strongest PC was a half celestial vampire (long story there lol) fighter, and was probably the most good (both in alignment and action) member of our party. It made for a lot of interesting role playing too.
Glad they nerfed those touch effects, on baldurs gate 2 losing levels after some undead attacks was annoying and little else. To make matters worse you could just lose levels again seconds from curing it with clerics spells...ರ╭╮ರ
+There are so many kinds of undea--
-Nah they are all different flavors of zombies and skeletons.
+What about liches?
-Those are magic flavored skeletons.
+And Ghouls?
-Paralisis flavored zombies
+And Mummies?
-Zombie with a skin.
+ And a wraith?
- Ghost
+ Specter?
- Ghost
+ Shadow?
- Dark Ghost
+ I hate you
- Me too.
Revenant Paladins
Your timing could not be better! My players will face a ton of different undead in my CoS campaign tomorrow 😊
I don't play D&D but I love the lore the books the comics all of it and I also love Marvel Superheroes. So I wanted to ask do you know what Venom's challenge rating would be if he was in the Forgotten Realms
i am not really a marvel fan (i watch some when my gf wants me to watch with her and that's it) but for the sake of answering your question i looked on venom's wiki to read the overview of his powers/abilities and compared that to several dnd creatures. i find it most likally for venam to be a cr 5 or maybe 6, making him on par with creatures like fire/water/air/earth elementals and vampire spawn.
@@palmagius Hes gotta be higher than that. he's One shotted Morbius in the comics and made Thor bleed when he punched him
Hey MrRhexx, long time fan, since the Skyrim days. Lutes and Dice is a great underrated channel. Folkard is really great at breaking down the stories in the publish adventures. His insight is great, deep and interesting. Rhys at Jetpack7 is also a young small channel and he does a great job of like how to play type of info. And I’m sure you are aware of AJ Pickett at TMG channel, he’s great and has also started doing lots of collaboration videos with others in your community. Anyway love your channel and your absolute enthusiasm. It’s always refreshing and informative. Oh and how could I forget to call out Jorphdan his channel is also one of my favorites. He does great overviews of lore compared to how you do a deep dive. Oh and Davvy Chapy he has entertainment value like yours. A great map maker I’ve recently found is 2-minute table top. Love his maps.
I always imagine a good lich that uses its need to consume souls as a way to punish the exceptionally bad criminals as a way to avoid them also going to the lower planes increasing the forces of evil. And while it would be terrible for common means to do this because you might get someone who is innocent, with magic you can actually force the criminal to tell the truth to find out if they actually caused the crimes, therefor you would be able to always be sure to not use this extreme punishment on someone that doesn't deserve it.
Except for the fact that becoming a lich is filled with doing depraved shit like sacrificing a child with phase spider venom.
@@Orapac4142 Those things are always changing, you could probably game that system to make sure any "evil" things you have to do would be done without innocence sufferings.
What if you sacrifice a "child" of an evil race? The larva of an Illithid would be a "child", or that of a red dragon, etc. What about polymorphing a murder into a child? You can always get out of things, especially when you live in a world where magic exists.
Started a Strahd campaign with a few guys online, this is very helpful!
In order to give undead a level of terror in my world, i have created a small list of diseases that undead can transmit and get the players sick in a variety of different ways. Magical or not, many of these diseases can wreak havoc on a player if not addressed quickly
Plays paladin*
@@evilspongebob6233 agreed
🎶"UNDEAD!"🎶
🎶"You better get up out the way"🎶
🎶"Tommorow we'll rise so let's fight today"🎶
🎶"And no, I don't give a fuk what you think or say"🎶
🎶"Cause we gonna rock this whole place anyway"🎶
Never even thought to ask you to do this! Awesome!
Ahh yes the Dungeon Masters Guide, my favourite 5e adventure
Ty I'm currently running a grim dark set in Etharis(Grim Hollow) and one of my players has been using salt and now I have more cinematic reactions for it
Thanks for the video, didn’t know that undead were THAT overpowered, who would have tought that a simple zombie or skeleton could do so much permanent harm, really makes sense why you don’t see Villagers with showels goeing after them.
Also, have you seens the Tanares RPG on kickstarter, it seems to be potentially good, but I don’t have expirience with distinguishing good 5e suplements on Kickstarters from alright ones, but I loved Grimm Hollow which you advertised.
Low level undead such as Zombies and Skeletons didn't have the overpowered level drain ability.
@@LostInNumbers That makes much more sens, as it just seamed unresonable, but who was i to question negative energy. But the amount of desises you could contract from rotting corpse is still nothing to scoff at as well, common man don’t have access to prist whou could heal them.
A idea I had inspired by "V rising" is a world where vampires(and maybe undead as a whole) have been forgotten and are considered myth when they return from slumber and begin to amass their power.
And the challenge for the players is a world that doesn't believe that vampires exist or ever existed to begin with and many of the vampire weaknesses are myths.
this was interesting to listen too and gave me some ideas since I have an area in my world that was destroyed by a necromantic explosion
Man this was AWESOME and so inspiring for my 5E CoS campaign! Please do a Pt2, 3, 4, 10!
good lord, with these old rules I would just run from every undead that came around.
Bartender: we have a problem with undead....
Me: Nope.avi
the D2 summon necro IMO, is the perfect necromancer archetype and and standard I compare all other necromancers I come across in various games. I would love to see somebody create a class for DnD that emulates that same feel you get in D2 rolling around with your death squad just picking up loot from the wake of destruction you leave behind!
When you started to talk about living zombies I was thinking about the so-called zombies of voodoo from early 20th century movies. They have no will but they are alive and under the control of a voodoo master
that video explains very well why (when i played baldur's gate 2) i only chose Undead Hunter Paladin as my group leader :D even after playing through the game multiple times, changing the group comp each time, there was always 1 constant: the undead hunter :D
Amusingly, there's quite a few magic items focused on keeping undead "alive".
I think one is like "Shirt of gentle repose" that "alives" an undeads body. Allowing it to keep "functioning" as normal. It does however not affect the undead damage wise. Like, you can't suddenly sneak attack them or poison them. Well, it WILL affect the body. But not the hp or status of the undead.
This Video needs to be so much longer. Or just one part of many
dnd: there is a combination of spells in the forgotten realms that allow you to control a living being as if it whre an undead thrall
anima beyond fantasy wizard with dominate life: look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power
I just signed up for twitter just to help you out man. You rock. Its the least i can do.
Home brew rule we used successfully in 2nd Ed. Energy drained levels could be recovered, but took a day of rest for each level. If you got drained below Level 1, you died (and suffered whatever effects were in the monster description for someone killed by their attacks). And, when you regained levels, you did so at the minimum XP for that level - and even when you regained the final level, you only got to the starting XP for that level (meaning any XP progression you had made towards the next level was permanently lost).
This kept undead really scary without being totally OP.
I really appreciate your videos, the amount of detail and work you put in to your videos can never be found anywhere else from what ive seen. If you don't mind, i have always been intrested in the undead that come from the Shadowfell called "Nightshades" i believe. Mostly because they look amazing. Please make a video on the subject. Great Work
Yep, I play pathfinder. A number of the more powerful and often incorporial undead Had level drain & stats drain that, if reduced to 0, would raise the character as another of it's kind (usually with less hp and no ability to do it themselves.
I've been playing D&D for over 35 years since Basic/AD&D so I think the new players in 5E have it too easy against the undead. Like MrRhexx mentioned the earlier editions' undeads' energy drain was scary because gaining levels was much harder than in 5E. 3.5E had negative levels which you didn't lose class levels permanently but rather temporarily. There were also undead that drained ability score points -- which was even worse the level drain because there was no ASI back then!
Personally I'm rather perplexed that they didn't just have players de-level temporarily, IE until a long rest. That makes it feel less unfun in the scope of the campaign, but maintains the difficulty of the encounter.
It’s taken months, but I am now fully caught up on this playlist.
I’ve always loved revenants and banshees as creatures so this topic is right up my alley
I'm stealing that salt idea though may make it so only a specific type of salt works in said fashion.
Proper dangerous undead and intelligent schemes of a powerful lich can be extremely scary, if well done.
In 5E its too often that the undead become just trash monsters, if anything players will be unable to kill a undead that is immune to non-magic weapons, but only early on, or if they never get any items from their DM , and most groups are stacked with magic items like crazy, which removes basically any challenge from monsters, unless the players are completely incompetent.